This article calls into question the frequently used negative moral labels assigned to corruption by describing gift giving as a form of narrative entrepreneurship that bridges ontologies between public service organizations. To effectively make the comparison, this article utilizes a unique methodology to explore corruption: the layered account autoethnography. The empirical setting of this story is a jointly operated military corrections facility in Iraq. It illustrates how gaps were perceived in the U.S.–Iraqi joint bureaucracy creating a space for play, and how corrupt behavior metaphorically bridged these gaps. Engaging in a minute form of gift giving provided remarkable insight into how partner organizations respond to traditional and corruption-friendly practices. This article is of benefit to practitioners and academicians alike because it illustrates at an individual level how corrupt bureaucracies function and how to promote successful interactions between alternate organizational ontologies.
AldrichH.FiolC. (1994). Fools rush in? The institutional context of industry formation. Academy of Management Review, 19(4), 645-670.
2.
AndersonL. (2006). Analytic autoethnography. Journal of Contemporary Ethnography, 35, 373-395.
3.
AshforthB. E.GioiaD. A.RobinsonS. L.TreviñoL. K. (2008). Re-viewing organizational corruption. Academy of Management Review, 33, 670-684.
4.
BarnardC. (1938). The functions of the executive. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
5.
BaronJ. N.HannanM. T.BurtonM. D. (1999). Building the iron cage: Determinants of managerial intensity in the early years of organizations. American Sociological Review, 64, 527-547.
6.
BaumJ. A.McGahanA. M. (2013). The reorganization of legitimate violence: The contested terrain of the private military and security industry during the post-Cold War era. Research in Organizational Behavior, 33, 3-37.
7.
BlockJ.SandnerP. (2009). Necessity and opportunity entrepreneurs and their duration in self-employment: Evidence from German micro data. Journal of Industry, Competition & Trade, 9, 117-137.
8.
BojeD. M. (2001). Narrative methods for organizational & communication research. Thouand Oaks, CA: SAGE.
9.
BrownM. E.TreviñoL. K.HarrisonD. A. (2005). Ethical leadership: A social learning perspective for construct development and testing. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 97, 117-134.
10.
BucklerS.ZienK. (1996). The spirituality of innovation: learning from stories.”Journal of Product Innovation Management, 13(5), 391-405.
11.
BurgelmanR. (1983). Corporate entrepreneurship and strategic management: Insights from a process study. Management Science, 29, 1349-1364.
12.
CheckelJ. T. (2005). International institutions and socialization in Europe: Introduction and framework. International Organization, 59, 801-826.
13.
ClarkeJ.HoltR. (2010). The mature entrepreneur: A narrative approach to entrepreneurial goals. Journal of Management Inquiry, 19, 69-83.
14.
de CerteauM. (1984). The practice of everyday life (RendallS., Trans.). Berkeley: University of California Press.
15.
CoorenF. (2004). Textual agency: How texts do things in organizational settings. Organization, 11(3), 373-393.
16.
CurrieG.HumphreysM.UcbasaranD.McManusS. (2008). Entrepreneurial leadership in the Engish public sector: Paradox or possibility?Public Administration, 86(4), 987-1008.
17.
DresangD. (1973). Entrepreneurialism and development adminsitration. Administrative Science Quarterly, 76-85.
18.
DowningS. (2005). The social construction of entrepreneurship: Narrative and dramatic processes in the coproduction of organizations and identities. Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice, 29, 185-204.
19.
EisenhowerD. D. (1961). Military-industrial complex (Public papers of the Presidents, 1035-1040). Wahsington, DC: National Archives and Records Administration.
20.
EllisC. S. (1992). Investigating subjectivity: Research on lived experience (Vol. 139). Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE.
21.
EllisC. S. (1999). Heartful autoethnography. Qualitative Health Research, 9, 669-683.
22.
EllisC. S. (2004). The ethnographic I: A methodological novel about autoethnography. Lanham, Maryland: AltaMira Press.
23.
EllisC. S. (2007). Telling secrets, revealing lives relational ethics in research with intimate others. Qualitative Inquiry, 13(1), 3-29.
24.
EllisC. S. (2009). Revision: Autoethnographic reflections on life and work. Adbingdon on Thames, United Kingdom: Taylor and Francis.
25.
FletcherD. E. (2007). “Toy Story”: The narrative world of entrepreneurship and the creation of interpretive communities. Journal of Business Venturing, 22, 649-672.
26.
FletcherD. E. (2011). A curiosity for contexts: Entrepreneurship, enactive research and autoethnography. Entrepreneurship and Regional Development, 23, 65-76.
27.
FletcherD. E.WatsonT. J. (2007). Entrepreneurship, management learning and negotiated narratives: “Making it otherwise for us—Otherwise for them.”Management Learning, 38, 9-26.
28.
FollettM. (1919). Community is a process. The Philosophical Review, 6, 576-588.
GartnerW. (1993). Words lead to deeds: Towards an organizational emergence vocabulary. Journal of Business Venturing, 8, 231-239.
32.
GartnerW. (2007). Entrepreneurial narrative and a science of the imagination. Journal of Business Venturing, 22, 613-627.
33.
GarudR.GiulianiA. P. (2013). A narrative perspective on entrepreneurial opportunities. Academy of Management Review, 38, 157-160.
34.
GeorgeM.GeorgeM. (2003). Lean six sigma for service. New York, NY: McGraw-Hill.
35.
GeertzC. (1994). Thick description: Toward an interpretive theory of culture. In Readings in the philosophy of social science (pp. 213-231). New York, NY: Basic Books.
36.
GoreA.Jr. (1994). The new job of the federal executive. Public Administration Review, 54, 317-321.
37.
GrintK. (2005). Problems, problems, problems: The social construction of “leadership.”Human Relations, 58, 1467-1494.
38.
HernesT. (2014). A process theory of organization. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.
39.
HjorthD. (2004). Creating space for play/invention—Concepts of space and organizational entrepreneurship. Entrepreneurship and Regional Development, 16, 413-432.
40.
HjorthD. (2007). Lessons from Iago: Narrating the event of entrepreneurship. Journal of Business Venturing, 22, 712-732.
41.
HjorthD. (2013). Absolutely fabulous! Fabulation and organization-creation in processes of becoming-entrepreneur. Society and Business Review, 8, 205-224.
42.
HjorthD. (2014). Introduction: Entrepreneurship in organizational contexts. In HjorthD. (Ed.), Handbook on organizational entrepreneurship (pp. 1-7). Cheltenham, United Kingdom: Edward Elgar.
43.
HjorthD.GartnerW. (2014). Moving and being moved: Ideas, perspectives and 59 theses on entrepreneurial leadership. In HjorthD. (Ed.), Handbook on organizational entrepreneurship (pp. 362-376). Chentenham, United Kingom: Edward Elgar.
44.
HuntingtonS. P. (2006). Political order in changing societies. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
45.
JohannissonB. (2011). Towards a practice theory of entrepreneuring. Small Business Economics, 36, 135-150.
46.
JohannissonB.OlaisonL. (2007). The moment of truth—Reconstructing entrepreneurship and social capital in the eye of the Storm. Review of Social Economy, 65, 55-78.
47.
JohannissonB.Ramirez-PasillasM.KarlsonG. (2002). The institutional embeddedness of local inter-firm networks: A leverage for business creation. Entrepreneurship and Regional Development, 14, 297-315.
48.
KatzJ. (2004). Reading the storybook of life: telling the right story versus telling the story rightly. In HjorthD.SteyaertC. (Eds.) Narrative and discursive approaches in entrepreneurship (pp. 233-244). Cheltenham: Edward Elgar.
49.
KleinP. G.MahoneyJ. T.McGahanA. M.PitelisC. N. (2013). Capabilities and strategic entrepreneurship in public organizations. Strategic Entrepreneurship Journal, 7, 70-91.
50.
KlineG. (1986). Past, present, and future as categorical terms and the fallacy of the actual future. The Review of Metaphysics, 40(2), 215-235.
51.
LeffN. H. (1964). Economic development through bureaucratic corruption. American Behavioral Scientist, 8(3), 8-14.
52.
LlewellynN.JonesG. (2003). Controversies and conceptual development: Examining public entrepreneurship. Public Management Review, 5, 245-266.
53.
LounsburyM.GlynnM. A. (2001). Cultural entrepreneurship: Stories, legitimacy, and the acquisition of resources. Strategic Management Journal, 22, 545-564.
54.
LuhmannN. (1995). Social systems. Stanford: Stanford University Press.
55.
LuiF. T. (1985). An equilibrium queuing model of bribery. Journal of Political Economy, 93, 760-781.
56.
MauroP. (1995). Corruption and growth. The Quarterly Journal of Economics, 110, 681-712.
57.
O’ConnorE. (2002). Storied business: Typology, intertextuality, and traffic in entrepreneurial narrative. Journal of Business Communication, 39, 36-54.
58.
PalmerD. (2012). Normal organizational wrongdoing: A critical analysis of theories of misconduct in and by organizations. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.
59.
PettersonK. (2004). Masculine entrepreneurship – the Gnosjo discourse in a feminist perspective. In HjorthD.SteyaertC., (Eds.), Narrative and discursive approaches in entrepreneurship (pp. 177-193). Chentenham: Edward Elgar.
60.
Plato. (2013). Meno. Project Gutenberg. Salt Lake, Utah: Project Gutenberg.
61.
RaeD.CarswellM. (2000). Using a life-story approach in researching entrepreneurial learning: The development of a conceptual model and its implications in the design of learning experiences. Education & Training, 42, 220-228.
62.
RaeD.CarswellM. (2001). Towards a conceptual understanding of entrepreneurial learning. Journal of Small Business and Enterprise Development, 8, 150-158.
63.
RamboC. (2005). Impressions of grandmother an autoethnographic portrait. Journal of Contemporary Ethnography, 34, 560-585.
RemarqueE. (1929). All quiet on the Western front (WheenA. W., Trans.). London, England: G.P. Putnam’s Sons.
66.
RonaiC. R. (1992). The reflexive self through narrative: A night in the life of an erotic dancer/researcher. Qualitatitive Inquiry, 405-420
67.
RonaiC. R. (1995). MULTIPLE REFLECTIONS OF CHILD SEX ABUSE: An argument for a layered account. Journal of Contemporary Ethnography, 23, 395-426.
68.
RonaiC. R. (1997). On loving and hating my mentally retarded mother. Mental Retardation, 35, 417-432.
69.
SchminkeM.AmbroseM. L.NeubaumD. O. (2005). The effect of leader moral development on ethical climate and employee attitudes. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 97, 135-151.
70.
Smith-CroweK.WarrenD. E. (2014). The emotion-evoked collective corruption model: The role of emotion in the spread of corruption within organizations. Organization Science, 25, 1154-1171.
71.
SparkesA. (2000). Autoethnography and narratives of self: Reflections on criteria in action. Sociology of Sport Journal, 17, 21-43.
72.
SpinosaC.FloresF.DreyfusH. L. (1999). Disclosing new worlds: Entrepreneurship, democratic action and the cultivation of solidarity. Cambrdge, Massachusetts: The MIT Press.
SmithR.AndersonA. (2004) The devil is in the e-tale: Forms and structures in entrepreneuruial narratives. In HjorthD.SteyaertC. (Eds.), Narrative and discursive approaches in Entrepreneurship (pp. 125-143). Chentenham: Edward Elgar.
75.
SteinerG. A.SteinerJ. F. (1980). Business, government, and society. New York, New York: Random House, Business Division.
76.
SteyaertC. (2011). Entrepreneurship as in(ter)vention: Reconsidering the conceptual politics of method in entrepreneurship studies. Entrepreneurship and Regional Development, 23, 77-88.
77.
StoutM. (2012). Competing ontologies: A primer for public administration. Public Administration Review, 72(3), 388-398.
78.
TanziV. (1998). Corruption around the world: Causes, consequences, scope, and cures. In Staff papers-international monetary fund (pp. 559-594). Washington DC: International Monetary Fund.
79.
TanziV.DavoodiH. (1998). Corruption, public investment, and growth. New York, NY: Springer.
80.
TeskeP.SchneiderM. (1994). The bureaucratic entrepreneur: The case of city managers. Public Administration Review, 54, 331-340.
81.
ThorpeR.GoldJ.HoltR.ClarkeJ. (2006). Immaturity the constraining of entrepreneurship. International Small Business Journal, 24, 232-250.
82.
TurnerR. (1947). The Navy disbursing officer as a bureaucrat. American Sociological Review, 12(3), 342-348.
83.
TreismanD. (2000). The causes of corruption: A cross-national study. Journal of Public Economics, 76, 399-457.
VaaraE.SonensheinS.BojeD. (2016). Narratives as sources of stability and change in organizations: Approaches and directions for future research. The Academy of Management Annals, 10, 495-560.
87.
VictorB.CullenJ. B. (1988). The organizational bases of ethical work climates. Administrative Science Quarterly, 33, 101-125.
88.
Von ClausewitzC. (2004). On war. Salt Lake, Utah: Project Gutenberg.
89.
WarrenD. E. (2003). Constructive and destructive deviance in organizations. Academy of Management Review, 28, 622-632.
90.
WeberM. (1958). The three types of legitimate rule. Berkeley Publications in Society and Institutions, 4(1), 1-11.
91.
WeberM. (2009). The theory of social and economic organization. New York, NY: Simon & Schuster.
92.
WelshD. T.OrdóñezL. D.SnyderD. G.ChristianM. S. (2014). The slippery slope: How small ethical transgressions pave the way for larger future transgressions. Journal of Applied Psychology, 100, 114-127.
93.
WhiteheadA. (1978). An essay in cosmology. New York, NY: Free Press.
